Neuro and the Everyday Things
by Sanpizil
Summary: Wherin Neuro and his faithful slaves explore the kinds of things that the Demon World does not have, including but not limited to: nightclubs, LIVE FOREIGN LOVE BRIDES!, English, moral dilemmas, and the restoration of one's boss to his normal insanity.
1. Electricity and History

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I don't own these guys, obviously. And the girls, well, no, I don't own them either.

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In case anybody is concerned, I'm not abandoning Today. This is just a meme that I'll be using when I want to do something short. The meme itself is kind of cute, but I really cheated on it ;; You're supposed to put your music player on shuffle, write a story with something to do with the song that gets picked, and then write only for the duration of the song. Well, this particular song is only a minute and a half long, so I cheated. It's a nice, quick, fun little meme, though, so please! Spread the love, if you so desire!

* * *

"Neuro," Yako gasps, "you mean you don't know how electricity works at _all?_" He casts her such a look of disdain that she almost gives up, but it's _important!_ He just referred to 'little fairies in the walls'! If he ever hopes to blend in as a human like he wants (like he's using her for, a bitter, scowly part of her inserts), then he's at least going to have to learn some of the most basic things about life on the surface.

"Is my slave telling me that _she_ knows better than I?" Neuro clamps his Iron Fingers of Death onto her head. It's all she can do to keep from giving in, but... come on! No way can he go much longer thinking fairies run the lights! ...Well, actually, knowing his stories of Hell, they very well might, back there. And they might even do it wearing red-hot little manacles, the way Neuro tells things, she reflects grimly.

"Nn," she pries his hand off gently, ignoring the way that his hand stays in hers, ignoring the heat she can feel through his glove, the heat of his body, the heat of _him_, "you're going to stick out like a sore thumb saying things like that!"

"Yeah," Godai shouts out from the couch, "a crazy sore thumb!"

* * *

Thirteen goose eggs on Godai's skull and a slightly bemused Neuro later, Yako's gotten him to agree to ask her about things he didn't have back in Hell. She has to stifle a sigh when he tries insisting that having an assistant unfamiliar with daily life is a customer draw.

"I read it on the internet, Yako," he had grinned at her, his teeth sharp and his eyes bright, "are you telling me to ignore that? Mystery attracts me, why not stupid humans who can't do anything for themselves?" Being unsure of how to break it to him that most things on the internet were lies, she decided to ask him where, exactly, he'd run into this interesting bit of business strategy.

* * *

The site he'd brought her to had almost made her faint: LIVE FOREIGN LOVE BRIDES!

"See," he said, practically purring with pleasure at his cleverness, "you need to pay better attention to your world, Slave Number One. It says right here, written by humans themselves, 'these exotic, mysterious women will arouse your curiosity... and other things!' Of course, that refers to credit cards, which means you," he had paused to grind his fists into her cheeks, "can eat as much as your piggish heart desires!"

* * *

Ignoring LIVE FOREIGN LOVE BRIDES! is no easy task, but for Neuro's sake, Yako does it. The only question is, how was he going to make her pay for forcing him to ask her things?

* * *

She finds out the next morning when she cracks opened an egg for breakfast and is met with a glassy, bug-eyed stare.

The neighbors call the police at the volume of her scream, and it takes a lot of time, energy, and apologizing to convince Sasazuka and Ishigaki that she's fine, that she just saw something that freaked her out.

Yako's sure she hears snickering on her ceiling just as their car pulls away, but she decides to give Neuro his victories and goes to take a shower. Hopefully, he left that alone, at least.

* * *


	2. Unknown Dance Mix

As always? I do not own these wonderful characters.

I'm a rather large fan of techno and trance, but I sincerely doubt that Neuro or Yako would be, unless they were in the kind of place where you had no other choice. I am of the firm opinion that Neuro would like strobe lights, though.

* * *

Yako isn't sure how they've ended up in a dance club, but Neuro seems to like it and Godai is happy at the bar. As a high school student she's naughtily thrilled and worried, but the music that's playing _is_ kind of okay, and besides, even Neuro shucks his coat in the combined heat of bodies.

He's sticking close to her, though, something she notices after she bumps into him the third time. Finally she gives up trying to find the person they're tracking and turns to Neuro, who's standing uncertainly in the tangled, dreamy mess of humanity like a stick in a mat of vines. She reaches for his hand and he lets her take it, looking around curiously, if a little suspiciously.

The lights kick on, blue and green and rolling. Neuro looks up as if he's getting ready to eat somebody. Maybe he is, but Yako doesn't let him; instead, she starts to lead him to the edge of the tangle. But suddenly somebody bumps into her, hard, and she goes flying into Neuro.

It gets a little hazy right there, but the next she knows they're next to a wall, tucked into a dark little booth with a curtain and a prime view of the door. Neuro shouts something at her, probably about the target of the investigation, but the music is so loud she can't hear.

She realizes she's sitting on his coat about the same time she realizes he's sitting right next to her. Yako can't quite figure why he'd have her on it, unless there's some kind of evil tool or whatever inside.

Neuro is looking sideways at her, trying to say something, his body arched up and over hers to peer around the side of the booth, when she spies the target going into a private room on the near wall. Neuro sees it too and they're off, him dragging her though people like it's some kind of crazy roller coaster ride.

Yako laughs at the snapshots of people she sees, running through a room filled with flashes of strobe: a woman with ridiculously long hair turning her back on a man with no hair to speak of; a couple twined together, oblivious to the world and the man staring at them with jaw agape; the DJ, spinning music with an expression most familiar on Neuro's face just after he's eaten. She sees Godai in a flash of color, talking to a pretty Chinese woman who's running her nails along his scalp- his expression is nervous but ecstatic; the bartender watches them with a cool, amused expression as he pours the woman's jealous boyfriend another drink. She sees Neuro's back, dyed blue, green, purple, violet, summer sky colors, the muscles beneath it tensing, relaxing, as he dives after his prey. She has his jacket in her other hand, and she's out of breath in a sort of overstimulated kaleidoscopic joy by the time she spies, in another flash of light, a door.

They burst out into the cool spring night together, scanning the dark frantically for their man. Neuro's expression turns sour when he realizes they've missed the man, but it flips to surprise when Yako bursts out laughing.

"It was fun," she explains to him, her hands still clutching his coat, "running through all those surprised people!" He threatens to cook her in the heat of the club, but he clearly doesn't mean it. He even spares the inside of the club another look, claiming he's seen more mysteries in there, but Yako knows better: he just likes the colors, especially the flashes of purple that remind her of his demon form. (She wonders how long it will take to convince him that strobe lights don't belong in a detective agency, and if he'll even listen.)

* * *


	3. Abcdefghijklmneuropqrstuvwxyakoz

I don't own them. Of course not!

This thing is coming dangerously close to having a potential plot. And by "dangerously close" I mean "I'm working on the second arc of this right now" and by "potential plot" I mean "mini-arc". The video is actually pretty interesting too, though I just listened to the sound after the first watch-through. You should watch it. Shinokoe was the one that gave me the idea to put them up along with the writing, so thanks!

Video/Song: **abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz**

The link to the video is here: wwwdotyoutubedotcom/watch?vajjg3faIQ5A

Just replace the "dot"s with dots, obviously.

* * *

"Easy as the abc's," a customer comments to Neuro, sounding amazed. "She solved it just like that!" Yako doesn't miss the strange look that he gives the customer, but Neuro doesn't miss her watching him.

"Ah, sensei is so smart. It's an honor to work with her, truly!" He tosses a pointy-toothed grin in her direction, one that made her knees feel a little weak. God only knows what Neuro will do to her when he finally gets around to demanding information and finds out how elementary it is.

* * *

"They're something American children learn to remember all the symbols of their writing," She explains, adjusting her hair and clinging to the edge of his desk. Oh, she really hadn't liked that. Neuro sets his computer to "English (USA)" and sets about typing, frowning ferociously when he doesn't think she's looking. If it didn't mean potentially being dangled out of a twenty-story building by her school vest or worse, she'd tease him about it. Yako values her life, values her vest, and so values the silence that falls in the office.

"Can you read it?" He demands. He looks a little cross.

"Neuro, do I look like an American child?!" He grabs her head and dangles her happily in the air, eyes vacant and blank. By all rights, Yako muses, he shouldn't even be able to do this. Surely his swivel chair would fall over?

Akane makes an anxious little sway over in her corner and her typing stops. "Is my servant beginning to forget that she is at the low station of a wood louse? Of course I don't think you are a child. You don't even have a bony spine!" He flings her across the room with a cackle. Yako recovers herself on a bookcase, spinning to avoid smacking her forehead on the wall, then slumps down to sit on the floor. Akane jumps anxiously, but Yako makes a soft motion with her hand and she stills.

When her heartbeat has calmed, Yako comes back over to the spot at Neuro's shoulder and peers at his screen. He's typed a long string of letters, mostly gibberish interspersed with a few Japanese words here and there. He has not, she notices, typed his own name.

It was the one of the first things they all learned in English, how to write their names. They knew the letters, of course, knew it enough to type out a few kanji, but to write their names in the weird loops and jagged edges of another system of writing was... different. Everybody wanted to find out what _theirs_ looked like, but Neuro... is looking closely at the symbols on his screen.

Finally he rummages around inside his desk, pulling out a pencil with an eyeball instead of an eraser and a tongue for a tip. Yako blanches at the sight of the object, quickly escaping before Neuro can grab her and... well, she doesn't know, but it probably entails her looking like a post-it note for the rest of the day. She wouldn't put it past him, either: Neuro's been a holy terror today, even for him.

But all he does is squint at the screen, then look down and etch out, slowly, Y A K O. She realizes with a little shock of surprise that in fact she's never really seen Neuro write. He types, he reads, and of course he speaks, Japanese. But knowing to type Japanese is different than the feeling of a pencil under your fingers, Yako knows. But why... write _her_ name? She forces herself to hold in a quick little giggle, too, because the letters are uneven, oddly round, and wobbly like a elementary student's.

"Nn, Neuro..." He looks up at her, obviously pleased with his accomplishment. "Uh, why did you put..." She doesn't know how to say it. Yako thinks she might be blushing a little. It's an oddly sentimental move for Neuro, but she doesn't want to point it out. She's already maxed out her punishment endurance quota five times over today.

"Oho, why would I waste my name on some paper? Besides," he grins, picking up the word, "this is a special pencil. You'll have to do exactly what I write." He fixes his brilliantly-hued stare on her, teeth half-visible in his delight. "What shall I write, hmm," he hunches over and starts to laboriously etch out 'jupu o-watusaide'. Yako sweats, but nothing happens. Neuro looks darkly at the paper, then at her. Back to the paper. Her. She doesn't dare point out that his handwriting is atrocious.

Finally she can't take it anymore and seizes Neuro's hand in her own. "Neuro, that's not how you write in English." He makes a low noise of discontent, probably gearing up for another prank on her. The eyeball on the pencil blinks and refocuses on her. "Look, see. N-e-u-r-o." His hand moves under hers unsteadily, clearly wanting to put loops and sways into it that don't belong there. (Yako wonders if Hell has a writing system all its own and figures, if it does, that it's what Neuro's used to.)

"Yako-" he protests, sounding uncharacteristically serious, but she ignores him and continues to guide his hand, forming out in a rare moment of wishfulness, 'is nice to us and is a good young man'. She'll just tell him it means something like 'loves to torment his slaves and is smart' or 'is a grand demon that is from Hell'.

She takes her hand away, mentally bracing herself for a wall-slam or, god forbid, some kind of demonic infestation in her home later on. What she doesn't expect is for Neuro to turn to her and politely, if a bit vacantly, say,

"Thank you very much for your guidance, Miss Yako."

* * *


	4. ROW ROW FIGHT THE POWER 2

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**Video/Song:** ROW ROW FIGHT THE POWER #2

The link to the video is here: wwwdotyoutubedotcom/watch?vmRO-XQyi2qo

Same gig as before.

* * *

So I thought really hard and wrote this WAAAY teal deer response to somebody's question. Ugh, it's almost longer than this chapter. So I felt guilty and wrote like, what? Another chapter? Oyoyooy. I'm sorry.

* * *

Neuro quietly sets to work, typing dextrously. Yako sits down at her own desk and stares at him, trying not to imagine what's going to happen to her when he recovers. How long does it take, anyways?

She'd taken the pen with her when Neuro went... funny. God only knew what a nice, polite Neuro would do- and besides, she needed to figure out how to UNdo what had been done! She'd tried writing, "Neuro is just like he always was now" and "Neuro returns to normal" and even, terrifyingly, "Neuro returns to normal and slams Godai and I into a wall"– nothing.

Currently Yako is staring at Neuro, trying to hide her distress. His 'earnest student' act is the reality right now, and it's freaking her out.

"Miss Yako, are you hungry? Perhaps I should fetch you something to eat." Yako stands up quickly, shaking her head.

"Neuro! Please, turn back to normal! Be horrible!" He gives her such a sad, shocked look that she almost feels bad- almost.

"Teacher, I would never be horrible! I try my best to be a good, nice young man. Am I doing it incorrectly?" Yako feels her face beginning to burn in shame. She'd just been joking around, trying to get the joke on Neuro for once, but... "Teacher?"

Yako sighs and nods to him, fighting back a wail. He looks so sad. "You're doing a good job, Neuro. Let's go get something to eat. I'll think of something for us to do while we wait." Neuro walks over to the coat rack, fetching her coat for her before sliding on his own, and blinks cutely at her. He _is_ cute, Yako decides, or rather, he would be if he looked like this all the time, without ferocious teeth and eyes ready to bore a hole in anybody that resisted him.

"But Teacher, what are we waiting for?" Yako looks up at him, mute with distress. She isn't used to leading Neuro, and she's not sure she likes it at all. The demon pen in her pocket vibrates a little as Neuro puts his hand on her shoulder. "Well, no matter. Teacher Yako's thinking is far above my own. I'll stand by your side, and wait too!"

Yako wants to cry. She really does. But she swallows her tears and walks to the elevator, purposefully not looking back at the man trailing her like a shy shadow.

* * *

Shonokoe: I was curious about what you had said, so I went back and looked through the manga up to where I've read (I've finished the anime, at least). When Neuro is explaining the Histerrier case, it's important to note that while "bommer" is in English, the names of the buildings and locations being bombed aren't. They're in romanized Japanese, which is typewritten. Noticing that consonants are the same is definitely not the same as knowing what, precisely, those consonants can combine into in English, or even what they sound like (since Japanese, and Chinese, simply borrow our letters for their sounds- a Japanese 'r', for example, sounds vastly different than an English one). Because of that, I'm pretty sure that Neuro doesn't know English all that well, or he would undoubtedly have commented on the insight into the bomber's mind that the name of "Histerrier" gives.

He also states that he doesn't understand the first line, which of course could be simple self-effacement. However, I know that when I'm looking up words in Chinese I don't know, if I can't find it in the dictionary, I assume it's the name of something (and often rightly so). Neuro could easily have done the same thing, especially since Bommer is probably one of the worst ideas for a name ever and nobody that knew a lot about English would _ever_ mistake it for one.

Also, the hand-written letters on the sheet of paper are very round and generic-looking. We never actually see Neuro writing it- knowing him, he just told Yako to write down the letters and didn't tell her why. I'm sure Neuro is capable of identifying and reading romanized letters- he'd be hard-pressed if not. However, him actually writing them with his own hands is something that's never really seen, though he does write in Japanese a bit (often on Yako's face). Again, drawing from my experience as a student of another writing system, I can safely say that my skill in writing English letters did _not_ carry over to Chinese, nor did it with any of my classmates. Even now, after three years of study, our teacher's writing is obviously more... aesthetically pleasing. We also barely know 'bo po mo fo ge ke ne le...', which is kind of the Chinese version of the abc's. After three years of (not easy) study, we still don't know many, many cultural references and children's songs- like, in English-speaking countries, the abc's.

Wow, waaaay too teal deer. **The point is**, while I totally just made it up in the spur of the moment in writing it, the thought that Neuro doesn't know or write much English is actually canonically supported... surprisingly. I was totally ready to admit that I just made it up. ;;


	5. Aeroplane

So, this is that second chapter I wrote when I felt guilty. I don't own Neuro or Yako or Godai, so...

Yyyeah.

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**Video/Song:** Aeroplane

The link to the video is here: wwwdotyoutubedotcom/watch?vSwnrAUuFb0g&featureuser

Again, just change the dot to .

* * *

After two weeks of a pliant, complacent Neuro, Yako is ready to tear her hair out. Her grief had faded to be replaced with anger- at herself, at Godai, who simply walked out as if it was a good thing, and at Neuro, just a little, for looking at her with sad eyes and elevating her to the status of a god without her having done anything.

She had thought and thought and thought, and finally she decided that she was going to try and figure out how she had done what she had at all. His tools didn't work for her- she knew that. So why had this one?

Yako sits and toys with the pen, looking at Neuro on occasion as he devotedly scours the internet for her. He's sleeping more and more as the weeks go on, constantly wondering why, if he's eating so _healthily_ (and he is; it disconcerts Yako a little), he's always hungry. She's starting to worry that not only has she deleted his personality, she's also handed him a death sentence- he _is_ still a demon, even if he doesn't seem to know it.

"Neuro," she calls, and cringes a little at how quickly he looks up at her. Two weeks and she still isn't used to him being devoted. Yako had liked it, for a bit, before the implications of his transformation occurred- he _was_ a nice young man. He held the door for her and smiled at her without threat, he fetched her food and ate with her, he helped her with her homework, he... Ugh, Yako thinks, leaning back in her chair, Neuro would be the perfect guy if he wasn't _Neuro_.

"Yes, Teacher Yako?" He perks up and is at her side instantly. She resists the urge to pet him, as if he's a dog or something. Well, like this, he kind of acts like one, complete with sad woobly eyes the moment he thinks he's messed up.

"Hold your hand out." She had thought very hard, and only one more course of action seemed to be available to her before she really started to despair. Godai had suggested, in a manner that Yako found oddly gentle, that if she had messed something up and she didn't know how, she should just do the exact same actions to figure it out.

"Hold this pen for me, Neuro," she orders. He takes it dubiously, with a low murmur of, "but this is your pen, Teacher...", but Yako insists and he obeys.

She slides up a piece of paper, takes his hand in hers, and starts to guide him in writing, 'Neuro is a demon'. He draws back, a little uncertain.

"Teacher, I... uhh..." He looks a little pale. Yako rests her chin in her hands and watches him. Akane is bouncing happily in the corner. Yako presumes that means that she thinks it's working and so takes his hand in hers again.

"Come on, Neuro. Let's try this again." He bites his lip and Yako is relieved to see those sharp, terrifying daggers he calls teeth.

'Neuro is back to normal' she drags out, using his hand. He gives her a single glow-eyed look before collapsing to the floor, eyebrows knit, body folded in like he's been gutted.

"Neuro!" She shouts, diving to the floor after him and trying to drag him to his feet. He lets her, expression empty, and starts to shuffle to the couch. Yako lies him down, watches him conk out like a light, cheeks drawn, expression wan, and feels a glow of relief so intense she could die of it.

She goes out, right then and there, and finds as many crossword, sudoku, and go scenario puzzles as she possibly can. When she gets back to the office he's still there, still horizontal, still sleepy. But his eyes slide opened as she comes in, and that small motion, full of menace, makes her want to throw her arms around him. She, Yako, had rescued the demon Neuro!

"Are you okay, Neuro?" He turns to look at her.

"...Hnh, of course I am. What kind of a pathetic wood louse are you, to doubt me?" She looks at him. He looks back. The silence stretches out until it feels like it's going to break them in two. Finally he shifts, turns to the puzzle she's handed him, and she can just barely hear him say, "...took a lot of energy to use that thing."

* * *

The next day she's slammed through two doors, flung out fifteen windows, and has her meals turned into various horrific animals three times. She almost weeps with joy and, yes, pain.

He doesn't seem to remember what he did during his weeks "off", proven by his efforts to bluff her into thinking he doesn't know much about 'human math'. She lets him squiggle all over her homework before pulling out a sheet he had written for her, in his handwriting, and using it to solve all the problems.

Sometimes, Yako muses, feeling the breeze in her hair, it's nice to startle Neuro. Yes, she thinks, being dangled off one of the tallest buildings in the city, sometimes it's a nice little reward.


End file.
